


Lucid Dreaming

by Sectumsempra



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Gen, Supernatural - Freeform, angel - Freeform, castiel - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 16:54:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2589125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sectumsempra/pseuds/Sectumsempra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He lies in an embrace of white and flooding water and gasps, stars that aren't there dancing in front of his eyes, hearing his own heartbeats drum against his ribs,</p><p>it's the sound of being alive, he thinks, and the thought sickens him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucid Dreaming

He has been in existence for millennia, and for the first time, he sleeps.

He thinks falling asleep will be difficult, but it is simple; the vessel – his body, now – knows how.

It knows many things, he discovers, all that is new to him; needs, urges, sensations; his flesh is experienced.

He follows its' lead.

 

He has been in dreams before, but they have never been his own.

He learns they are private places, feels ashamed about how he has pushed into people's sleeping minds, entered them like unlocked rooms, never bothered to ask permission.

Angels, he thinks bitterly. Angels are righteous.

Doubt was his defect.

 

In dreams, his mind goes places he won't take it when he is awake. On good nights, it goes places where he wants to be; sometimes, it takes him Home.

Takes him to Heaven, how it was before thing went Wrong, a place of peace, a place where he knew his place, his purpose.

He dreams of an uncorrupted Heaven, wakes with home sickness in his human heart.

 

Most nights, the places he goes are dark. He learns that fear is real even when what you are afraid of is not, learns that phantom pain can be excruciating.

He learns Nightmares.

 

He falls asleep and ends up in fields littered with the bodies of his brothers and sisters; all the deaths he's responsible for.

He awakes and the grief and guilt are heavy and raw, even on the blessed mornings when he cannot remember the dreams themselves.

It is the grief of an angel, vast and endless, the guilt of an ancient soldier that ended up with the blood of his own kin on his hands; it should be too much for a human heart to bear, feels like it is, hurts in a way he thinks he cannot live through; but his body acts on instinct, the way a human body should, shows him there are ways to cope:

it cries.

 

Sometimes falling asleep is difficult because of the Silence. The vacuum in his head.

They say no man is an island but damn it if he isn't. Human ears misses so much.

He misses prayers. Even when he could not answer them, just knowing he was needed -

he misses the hum of the ever ongoing communication between the Angels; their minds, unlike humans', were never isolated places.

 

And the distance between him and those he cares for, now that he has shed his wings, now that he cannot be with them the second he wishes -

he feels alone and sometimes, so very, very small.

Without his Grace there is so very little left of him.

 

 

Mortality hurts. He had believed he understood the concept of physical pain,

finds he was wrong.

Suffering pain as an angel is something altogether different, all the edges taken off, dulled. Bearable.

The enamelled surfaces of his bathtub becomes slippery from hot water and soap; he loses his balance and falls, catches himself in all the wrong angles on his left wrist and it's all new

pain sparkling and igniting in his bone, moving like wildfire up his arm, heat spreading as though his veins are leaking, the ache flaring in rhythm with his pulse -

suffering pain, now that he is no longer just wearing his flesh. It takes his breath away.

He lies in an embrace of white and flooding water and gasps, stars that aren't there dancing in front of his eyes, hearing his own heartbeats drum against his ribs,

it's the sound of being alive, he thinks, and the thought sickens him.

 

He lies on his side, cradling his wrist, waiting for the nightmares, hoping it'll all be better in the morning,

finds that for the first time in so very long he wishes he could go Home, to heaven, where he is a celestial being devoid of not only this certain kind of pain,

and he would laugh, if his throat wasn't so tight; he dressed himself in this flesh, stole a man's life away without a second thought, just so he could walk the Earth, and now,

 

now that he wants out, it holds him captive.


End file.
